Pages

Tuesday, 12 March 2013

YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley to launch rival video-sharing site

YouTube has had its share of competition over the years in the form of upstarts like Vimeo and DailyMotion. And that's besides problems dealing with copyright infringement issues,controversial uploads and spiralling costs due to server upgrades and what not. But the service is chugging along even in the face of recent video rivals like Hulu and NetFlix.

Early competition forced the hand of Chad Hurley and YouTube's other co-founders to sell the video sharing service to Google. And Hurley, who left Google in 2010, hinted that he is ready to launch a potential new rival.

"I wish [South by Southwest] was a month later because I could unveil the new product," Hurley said during a Q&A with Digg founder Kevin Rose at the SXSW event in Austin, Texas on Saturday. According to AdWeek, Hurley didn’t go into too many other details, but did reveal the service will be "primarily video-based...and gives flexibility for people to work together and create content."

When asked if he is taking another shot at making a better YouTube, Hurley agreed. "We're not setting up to [kill YouTube]—now," he said. He added, "There’s always going to be a place for YouTube." So what exactly is the point of the new product? Hurley believes it can sit along side YouTube and the new service is intended as a platform better suited for collaboration and crowdsourcing.

YouTube was founded by Hurley along with Steve Chen and Jawed Karim, and began operating in 2005. The company was bought over by Google within a year of its launch and is by a long way the most popular video sharing website in the world. However, before Google took over the reins, the service was courted heavily by Yahoo.

Hurley used the Q&A to reveal how Google negotiated with YouTube and that some key details of the deal were finalised at fast food chain Denny's. "We met with Eric (Schmidt) and Sergey (Brin) at Denny's in Redwood City (to talk about the possibility of selling YouTube). We met there the week before with (Yahoo’s) Jerry (Yang) and Terry (Semel)," he said. He further added that noting that Semel had suggested the location because it was "very low-key and had great breakfast."

However, despite being wooed by Yahoo first, Hurley and his fellow co-founders went with Google. "Yahoo didn't necessarily step up the way Google did. We knew they were going to give us the support," he said.